


The Water Prowler

by jjtaylor, Pennyplainknits



Category: Original Work
Genre: Community: pod_together, F/F, Magical Creatures, Monster girlfriends, New England folktales, Original Fiction, Podfic & Podficced Works, The Werewolf Prowling Mission Origin Myth, Werewolves, is this fanfic of my own fanfic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:46:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25557562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pennyplainknits/pseuds/Pennyplainknits
Summary: There was a serpent who lived in the depths of the great river. It did not require anything to grant passing except for a greeting, or so was the knowledge passed down to those who made the journey across the water.“Hello Esther,” Roan said as she pushed the boat into the water and began to row.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20
Collections: Pod_Together 2020





	The Water Prowler

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Detective's Secret and the Mystery of the Dancing Flowers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/141510) by [jjtaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor). 



> To listen to Penny read this story click [here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/di6ks1inm88hwny/waterprowler.mp3?dl=0) to stream on dropbox or right click [here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/di6ks1inm88hwny/waterprowler.mp3) to download.

One night long ago, under the moon of Ebullience, a young wolf in human form set out to bring a message to the Neighbors across the river. This was a journey Roan had made many times before. She brought with her a loaf of bread, and four small sachets of fresh herbs.

The path from her pack’s territory to the river lay at the mouth of an oxbow, and the boat for travel to the Neighbors was tucked into the embrace of the tall, shady trees that seemed heedless of the rise and fall of the waterline. As she pulled the boat into the water, she placed the first of the bags of herbs on the sandy soil where the boat had rested. She stepped over into the boat and began to row.

There was a serpent who lived in the depths of the great river. It did not require anything to grant passing except for a greeting, or so was the knowledge passed down to those who made the journey across the water. 

“Hello Esther,” Roan said as she pushed the boat into the water and began to row. Even though she kept her voice low, the name traveled in the quiet on the windless night.

Roan was a quarter of the way across the river when she first saw the rivulets in the water that heralded the arrival of the serpent.

“Hello wolf,” the serpent spoke as she broke the surface. Her scales were both as black as the water and iridescent as the minnows that dart in the shallows. Sometimes as the water slid off her as she emerged, they looked like the feathers of the herons who hunt the minnows.

“Surely you can call me by my name, after all these trips back and forth,” Roan said. In time according to serpents, it may not be that long at all that they’ve shared this passage, but it was often enough and for long enough that Roan barely remembered what the journey felt like without a friend to talk to.

“I do call you by your name,” the serpent’s watery voice responded, quiet as the smallest of waves rocking against the boat, a shush of admonishment.

“You call me what I am.”

“And you call me what I am not.”

“Well if you’re not an Esther, then tell me what I should call you.”

The serpent did not answer. She swam alongside the boat. Roan found she hardly needed to row at all to be carried to the opposite shore.

“I brought bread,” Roan said. “Flax seed this time. Are you certain you don’t want a piece?”

“I do not know what this bread is that you continue to offer me,” Esther said. Roan trailed her fingers idly in the water but did not bother to get out the bread from her travel pack. 

“I keep showing it to you but you’re not going to know until you try a bite.” 

The serpent did not answer. Roan didn’t even know what Esther ate, and while it obviously was not a diet made up of grain, Roan kept teasing.

“What message do you carry to your kin across the shore this night?” Esther asked in between the calls of crickets and frogs.

“Nothing portentous. Updates on family members on my shore. A tip about interplanting that’s keeping armored beetles from eating everything.”

“Mmmm,” Esther said. “I like armored beetles.” 

Roan laughed. “I will have to make you beetle bread next time, we certainly have an overabundance of them.”

“You carry herbs.”

“Do you like herbs?” Roan asked, “Do you eat them? Or do magic? I could bring you some.”

“Why do you leave them behind, when you take the boat, and when you anchor?”

Roan patted her pockets where the remaining three sachets sat. “It’s silly, I guess. The superstition is that the Fairies take ownership of anything left out in the night. It is my boat, but when it’s not mine, it may as well be someone else’s. I leave a gift, a sort of token, in case I took my boat when it was their boat.”

They have almost reached the opposite shore. The crossing was swift with the cut of serpent scales through the water.

“Your herb token. Is this the same reason you keep trying to bring me food?”

“The herbs are to ward against potential offense. I just like to share food.”

Esther does not laugh, but her eyes blink rapidly in a way that Roan had decided might be close.

“I will see you again in a few hours,” Roan said as she pulled the boat onto the sand 

Esther disappeared back under the water.

Roan’s visit to the Neighbors was met with joy, and she was treated to rich stew to warm her after her travels. She delivered her messages, collected news to be returned home, and gifted the bread, only to have her pack filled in return with rolls and sweets.

As Roan began the path back down through the fields, toward pine trees that blocked the wind from off the water, she saw a young woman standing in the brown and brittle waist high grass of last season. The girl’s hair tangled about her face in the wind.

“Hello,” Roan spoke cautiously. “Do you live near here? I am just coming from the Neighbors.”

The girl did not answer.

“Alright, I’m just going to head down the path, I didn’t want to startle you.”

The girl turned to face Roan. She looked very frightened. “You must not return to the river tonight,” she spoke in a grave tone.

“My family will worry,” Roan said.

“Their worry is preferable to your lack of return at all.”

“Are you threatening me? Are you Fairy? Our pack has an agreement with your kin.”

The girl did not answer.

“I am going to head down to the water,” Roan tried again.

“You must not!” the girl sounded abruptly frantic. She looked as though she was trying to run to Roan but she was held in place.

“Are you alright? Do you need help?”

“You can help me by not returning to the river tonight.”

“Is something going to happen there? I have a friend who lives there.”

Something flickered in the girl, a strange expression passing over her face. “The danger is to wolves,” she said.

Roan was increasingly unnerved. She felt compelled to take this strange girl’s message to heart. What harm could be found in waiting until dawn?

“I will return when the sun rises,” Roan said.

The girl faded until Roan could see the grass through her translucent figure. 

The Neighbors don't question her return. They understood being guided by instinct. She did not tell them about the girl’s warning.

She vowed that in the dawn light, she would look for the girl, and she would ask Esther if she had seen what happened, what hunter or ghost or threat was tracking her, and waiting for her down by the riverbank.

They were coming up on the Worm Moon, and Roan wondered if that’s why her dreams were filled with confusing, swirling shapes.

In the morning, there was fog, and the smell of woodsmoke. On her way back to the river, Roan looked for the girl and saw nothing, not even the place where the grass should have flattened where the girl had stood.

As she slipped the boat into the water, Roan became more certain that she'd imagined it, that some magic cajoled her to keep her away.

“Hello Esther,” she said, as she slid across the water. There was more wind that day, and she had to paddle hard to correct for it. She did not hear the familiar slip of Esther’s arrival, not even once she reached the center point, where she could see down the farthest both up and down the river.

A quarter of the way left before the shore, her heart began to pound, her mind spiraling. It was a short trip, and Roan did not have any idea of the scope of Esther’s territory. They could be nocturnal, and asleep. Roan had rarely made the journey in the morning, and certainly never this bright into the morning sun.

Still, the apparition of the girl the night before seemed even more ominous. 

“The danger is to wolves,” she’d said, but what if it wasn’t only to wolves.

There were no messages to deliver the next day, but Roan went to the riverbank anyway. She walked the shore through the soft weeds and ducked under the low branches of the birch trees, and even waded into the water.

“Hello Esther,” she said, scooping water with the cup of her hands, and letting it pour back out. “I hope you’re there. 

The serpent did not answer, and Roan told herself she had not been expecting one. 

Under the Moon of Intransigence, Roan was sent on another message run. She brought a loaf of bread, and along with her sachets of herbs. She had also collected a bag of armored beetles. Such a paltry amount for a serpent Esther’s size would have been no more than a candy from the maple sap. Still, Roan was anticipating the joy of giving up this prize.

The water was cold on her hands as she climbed into the boat, and she warmed them under her arms before she gripped the paddles. 

Roan greeted Esther, and there was no response. Almost to the other shore, feeling despair welling up in her, she called for her again, pleaded for her to answer.

On the path up the hill to the Neighbors, Roan looked for the girl in the grass fields. She saw nothing but her own shadow from the moon high above.

Roan should be with her family for their run through the woods on the full moon, but before nightfall, she slipped out and headed to the river. She had a plan, though it was little more than a hope. 

The legends said the Fey Folk traveled more widely at the full moon. Near where her boat sat, Roan turned her back to the river and faced the woods of the riverbank.

“If you have taken the herbs I leave,” Roan called. “I need help. You’re under no obligation, they were gifts, but I hope you understand my word is good.”

There was no response, but Roan tried one last thing before giving it up as being foolish. “It’s about the serpent, who lives in the river. She’s gone, and I’m worried.”

A figure of a person, or someone who had seen a person from afar and was trying to mimic how they looked, stepped forward from between the trees. 

“You look for the serpent. Why?”

“She’s gone, and I don’t know if we’re friends, I hope we’re friends, but maybe we’re just - two souls who meet in the river as we cross one another’s path. And I haven’t seen her. For too long.”

“Many seek her. Do you intend to do her harm? I will know if you lie.”

“I don’t want to harm her! And I’m not lying. I don’t even want to bother her if she needs solitude or rest. I only want to know that she’s safe.”

Roan felt the heavy weight of the Fey’s regard. “It is the Pink Moon when dusk falls. You are a wolf.”

Roan nodded.

“I suppose we are going to see how well a wolf can swim, and how deep she may dive.”

Roan felt a shiver pass over her, the touch of magic. “You will not need to come up for breath,” they said, and Roan followed them into the murky water.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Down,” the Fey said, and Roan nodded, trying not to stare into the strange owl-like eyes of her new ally. As they began to swim, Roan shifted into her wolf form.

The bottom of the river was not at all what she had expected - smooth silt under a well-traveled path. No, it was a mosaic; tall, tangling weeds and sharp-shelled mussels on rocks large and small, boulders and pebbles, and everywhere different currents, and yet all of them moving toward the same destination, a slow and consistent and steady flow.

They traveled deep enough into a dip between rocks that seemed an ominous gateway, and the darkness of the sky was subsumed by the darkness of the river at this depth.

And then she saw it. The shimmer of Esther’s scales.

Her long, lithe body was contorted under thick ropes, which were staked into the river bed.

Roan swam with all her might, down to where Esther was bound, head down like a scolded pup.

Roan couldn’t speak in her wolf form, except for the shared language of other wolves, but somehow she was able to call to the Fey with her mind. “Help me,” she pleaded, as she moved toward the ropes.

“I am unable to interfere,” they replied, which Roan thought was absurd. It had certainly been interfering to bring her down there and show her what she otherwise could never have found. But there must have been some other magic at work and she did not have time for an explanation.

She began to claw and rip and bite at the ropes. She slashed at them, until her legs and paws ached, until her jaw would barely one more time, until small rivulets of blood came from her mouth, raw gums and maybe broken teeth.

It would never be enough; she was too small. And Esther had just laid there, eyes closed. 

Roan swam to the space where Esther’s head rested, making a deep groove in the riverbed. She did not know if Esther would be able to hear her the way the Fey could, but she had to try.  
“I’ll come back. I have to go get my pack. It’s too much for me alone. Ok, Esther? Esther, oh my dear Esther, I’ll come back for you.”

Roan looked up to see the Fey watching her. “What did you call her?”

“It’s not her real name, I don’t know what her name really is, but I had to call her something and I always thought Esther was a nice name. I have to go get my pack. Tell me, if I leave, will you still be here, will you bring us all down here?”

“You won’t need me,” the Fey responded. “You will have your pack and you will be able to find your way again.”

Back on the shore, Roan’s blood sang for her to run to her pack. She could hear them howling and calling, on the prowl in the woods.

But before she took off running, she regarded the Fey. She found they could speak here on land much the same as underwater, without words.

“Thank you,” she said, “For showing me. For helping me find her.”

“You did not argue when I said I couldn't interfere,” they replied. “Why?”

“Were you lying to me?”

“No,” they said.

“She was tied down there, you saw those ropes, those stakes. If you were able to help, you would have.”

The Fey’s scrutiny was uncomfortable to bear. “May the moon speed you to your pack.”

Roan ran.

She returned with her pack, eager to help. She dove into the river with her family of wolves, the full moon their guardian, shining down above them in the cloudless sky. Their reflections were broken again and again as they dove in, dove down, with single-minded purpose, to free what was bound.

As some of the ropes began to go slack, Esther watched them with a distant, startled look in her eyes, hardly recognizable as the same stoic yet playful creature Roan had traveled with back and forth across the river.

First one, then several stakes came free as rope after rope broke, and Esther began to tense and flex her long body. Several more ropes snapped and Roan knew she was close, she was so close to being free. 

Finally, with the pack’s tearing and rending, with Esther’s shift from resigned to determined, the bindings holding her were broken and she burst out, fleeing down the river into the dark, far enough that Roan could no longer see her.

The pack broke the surface, howling with celebration, relief, victory. They swam to shore, shook off the water, checked one another for injuries. They circled in on Roan, and nudged her, playfully biting at her muzzle. She was overjoyed and bereft at the same time, and they were all exhausted. Her pack trotted alongside her and urged her back to their clearing in the woods in the safety of their homes, where they groomed the river water from one another’s fur, and curled up to rest.

At mid-morning the next day, Roan went down to the river, and called to Esther, but received no response. A week from that night, she was tasked with another message run to the Neighbors. She didn’t hear even the slightest break of the water’s surface, on the way out or on the way home. She tried to accept the fact that her serpent friend may have fled forever from the place where she was so terribly trapped. Roan couldn't blame her, but she also missed her.

Roan longed for Esther through the months of summer, until one night, under the moon of The Grief Tender, in days approaching Strawberry Moon, Roan’s greeting as she paddled across the river was answered.

“Hello, Esther,” she spoke hopefully.

The splash of Esther surfacing thrilled her like the pull of the moon.

For those few moments it seemed as though nothing was different; Roan was making her regular journey across the river. But Esther’s silence stretched on.

“I thought you were gone,” Roan spoke into the quiet.

“I am not gone,” Esther said. As her boat cut through the water, Roan began to suspect that her questions would never be answered, but her joy at seeing Esther again overrode her desire to understand what had happened, and she did not want to compel Esther to reveal that which she wished to keep secret. Eventually, though, Esther continued.

“They bind me down there every several hundred or so years,” she said. “They fear I become too powerful, that I will rule the waters and keep them from what they believe is theirs. Eventually I break free, and enough time has passed that I have become a rumor again, and those who spot me are not believed. Until the fear passes from person to person, and they come for me again.”

“How long would you have been down there,” Roan asked, voice shaking, “if I hadn’t found you?”

“Longer than your lifetime.”

“Esther - “ Roan whispered, broken open at what Esther had endured, what she seemed to consider inevitable. “You knew they were coming. You came to me that night. The girl, it was you. You warned me to stay away. I could have helped you!”

“They would have killed you,” Esther said plainly. “They have done so to any who helped me before.”

Anger was coursing through her, and she wanted to growl and weep. “What of the ones who bound you? You told me the passage of time allowed you to return to only being a rumor. Will you leave?”

“I will not go out to sea. This river is my home. They find me no matter what currents I seek as refuge.”

Roan spoke what had been foremost in her mind. “And if you had a pack of wolves defending you?”

Esther ducked under the water, came up on the other side of the boat. 

“No, it would lead only to more fighting. They would ruin the peace you have.”

“You don’t understand, there is not a negotiated peace. They do not bother us because they fear us.”

Esther paused before she spoke again. “You led your pack to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Roan said, “I know you prefer not to be known but I couldn’t free you on my own.”

“Why would they help me?”

“Because you needed help. Because I asked them to.”

“Do they not fear the great serpent of the river?”

“I think, as the river is your territory, there’s no need. You allow me passage, and I do not fear you.” Esther coiled and twisted under the water, seeming almost restless as Roan spoke. “Then it’s decided. I will stand guard.”

Esther ducked their head, lifted it again as water rivulets spilled down around their horns and around the crests of their eyes like the water of the river spilling around bends in the land.

“I should never have befriended you,” Esther declared and Roan felt a burn in her heart. Soon it would be aflame, and soon after that reduced to ashes. “This will get you killed,” Esther said. “I will get you killed.”

“Something will kill me,” Roan affirmed, stalwart. “Wolves are not immortal. I will die and I will return to the arms of the moon, and if she sees fit, I will again become a wolf.”

She lifted up her oars. In the middle of the river, the current was soft, and she spun in an eddy.

“How did you find me?” Esther asked as they spiraled around one another.

“I asked for help. I asked the one who shares ownership of the boat.”

“The ones in Fairy led you to me,” Esther concluded. 

“Why couldn’t they help? They said they couldn’t interfere.”

“Their rules about meddling in the fate of others are complicated. Do not fault them.”

“I thank them,” Roan said. “For involving themselves enough to lead me to you.” 

“Why would you risk yourself for me?” Esther asked, and the answer came easily to Roan.

“What is my life for? Should I continue to deliver messages and contribute to my pack while knowing I am safe but a friend is not?”

The serpent did not answer. 

It was to the Fey that Roan must go before embarking on the path before her. “I am looking for the one who brought me into the water,” Roan spoke into the woods on the eve of the full moon, her ankles tickled by the cranesbill growing all around the shore. “It’s about Esther - the serpent.”

The Fey who had taken Roan the water to save her friend stood before her.

“Ask your question,” they said. Not friendly, but not threatening, much like the woods, alive and present but with its own particular business.

“I want to protect the serpent from those who attacked her. I know you can’t interfere, but I need to know that if my pack and I guard the waters, will we be crossing your territory?”

The Fey considered her, gaze piercing. “You are asking for our permission. To guard a creature. We have no quarrel with you or your wolves.”

“Or with the serpent?”

“We have no quarrel with.....Esther.” There was the hint of the smile tugging at the Fey’s mouth.

“Thank you,” Roan said, “I can - do you want me to bring more herbs? Or bread, I’m good at bread and we have plenty of grain.”

“You do not need to bring us any token. Your role as guard is enough.”

Roan turned to whisper into the water, “See you tonight.”

When she looked back to the woods, the Fey was gone.

Roan received enthusiastic approval from her pack for this new role, and a rotation was put in place, for other wolves to take up the job in shifts. No one was to keep watch during the day, though they found reasons to come to the river more frequently in their prowl.

The confrontation came not even a whole cycle later, under the moon of The Sinking Talon.

“They’re coming,” Esther said, rising up from the water in alarm where Roan had been setting leaves afloat on the still surface.

“Go,” Roan demanded, “Go, please, go far.”

Esther ducked under the water, but there was no twist or whirl of her taking off down the river. Roan knew she was still too close.

There were people with ropes, and stakes. Not as many as Roan would have expected, but one was wielding magic as a weapon, crackling in the air.

Roan stepped forward from her place at the bank, from the rocks she had come to think of as hers, where she talked with Esther and watched the current of the water, the stars reflected, and the moon’s watery face.

“We have business here,” one of them declared. “Leave now and we won’t involve you.”

“I am already involved,” Roan spoke boldly. “If you have come to bind the serpent, I am here to stop you.”

They laughed. They saw her as only a girl, and for all their magic, they didn’t recognize her for who she was. 

“You will stop hunting her.”

“Her!” another laughed. “It’s a monster.”

“As am I,” Roan said and flashed fangs and claws, her bright predator eyes and her own magic.

They looked nervously between one another, but eventually turned to the sorcerer.

Roan found herself lighted high into the air, and pitched sideways into the water. She did not sink very deep before she was lifted up by Esther with incredible strength, Roan no more than a pebble to her.

“There it is! Strike, strike,” they shouted, 

Roan had never planned to face down this attack alone. Her pack heard her howl, and so did the Neighbors, far across the bank. More howls rent the air, filling the night with echoes, an endless call and response.

Roan knew immediately that there would be no need for further fighting. The people cursed and ran, afraid of the real threat of the wolves more than the imagined threat of Esther.

Esther lowered her head so that Roan could jump the rest of the way onto the shore, feet landing just in the shallowest part of the water.

The pack began to return home after shouts of greeting and thanks across the river to the Neighbors, and polite bows to Esther, who had not shown herself to any of the other pack guards beyond this moment, and the rescue. When Roan looked up over the heads of her pack, she saw the Fey, watching from between the trees.

“I am in your debt,” Esther said, in a low rumble as Roan knelt on the shore. 

“No, no, we talked about this. This matters to me.” .

Esther nodded, her great horns bowing low, her yellow eyes blinking once before she splashed off into the water.

“See you next time, then,” Roan said, bittersweet.

She gasped when the branches rustled behind her, but it was only the Fey, still watching.

“Those who come for her are not gone forever,” they said. “They will spread tales of wolves in league with serpents, of monsters choking the waters of the river.”

Roan could only hope she had not brought the wolves, the Neighbors and their neighbors, more trouble than they could manage.

“When you were with me in the water,” the Fey continued, “You did not need to breathe until you returned to the surface.”

“Yes, that was.....strange. Against instinct,” and because she did not want to appear ungrateful, “Helpful.”

“You still have this magic, as long as you are a wolf.”

“You mean as long as I’m alive?”

The Fey paused. “Wolves believe in the moon’s gift of many lives, do they not?”

“We do,” Roan agreed. “Wait, are you giving me a way to protect her, even in another life?”

“I am giving you a way to swim with her,” the Fey said.

Roan felt tears on her cheeks. “Oh,” she said quietly.

“This is what I may do,” the Fey said. Roan understood, then, that this was both a gift, and an apology, for whatever it was that constricted the Fey’s ability to interfere. “I will see you again,” the Fey promised, and when Roan wiped the tears away and nodded, the Fey faded into the woods.

The next time Roan saw Esther, she was pushing her boat into the water to make another trip to the opposite shore and bring news to the Neighbors.

“Hello, Esther,” Roan greeted her as usual.

Not even a breath later, Esther was there, as though she had been waiting. 

“Hello wolf,” Esther greeted her.

The song of crickets was loud and bats careened by, snatching insects from the sky.

“You were gone a long time,” Roan said cautiously. “Are you angry with me?”

“Anger is not the word for what I feel. I do not like being seen ....trapped. Powerless.”

“I don’t think you’re powerless. And see, I told you, I didn’t get myself into trouble.”

Esther snorted, a fine spray over the surface of the river.

“I wasn’t ever really in danger!” Roan protested.

“You did not see your body flying through the air and crashing into the water from below.” 

Roan laughed, and then her tone turned serious. “I know it’s not the end of the threat. But I’ve gotten quite fond of this river. I don’t really mind staying close.”

Esther swam alongside Roan’s boat. The moon peeked out from between the clouds and set Esther’s scales shimmering.

Esther pushed herself up, giant eyes even with Roan’s. “My name was once The Unmeasurable Snake, the Water Prowler, the Watcher, Constant of this Great Tidal River ”

“Oh wow,” Roan breathed out.

“You may continue to call me Esther.”

Roan laughed, nervous and delighted.

“May I call you Roan?” Esther asked, hesitant.

“It is my name,” she said. “Moreso than wolf.”

“Serpent and wolf, what we are named is what we are.”

“And yet we’re also something more.” Roan pulled up the oars and let the boat coast. “Someone gave me something, I’d like to try it out.” She dove from the boat into the water, and came up, swimming, beside Esther.

“Will I find fins when I look under the surface?” Esther teased.

“No,” Roan said, but she dove down again and as she started to swim, she shifted into her wolf form. When Esther understood, she splashed down, too, and was caught up with Roan in just one undulation of her body. Under the water, Esther’s eyes were bright as the moon.

**Author's Note:**

> For pod_together, Penny asked for a New England folktale, or something about the Werewolf Prowling Mission, who are mentioned in The Detective's Secret as the recipient for fundraising done at the werewolf fancy dress ball. Through narrative acrobatics, I somehow gave her both. 
> 
> There's a rather flimsy legend about a sea serpent in the nearby Connecticut River. And, well, I wanted a story where she had a friend. In the vampire detectives universe, this story is a legend that inspired the Werewolf Prowling Mission and their call to help and protect their community.
> 
> Thanks to my co-creator JJ, and thanks to you all for listening. Aroooooooo -Penny


End file.
